Create a Dynamic Background in After Effects

Getting the Project Files

Download the project files
After the download has finished, be sure to unzip the file if it hasn’t been done for you.

Project Overview

Ready for an MTV flashback? In this tutorial your learn how to create a funky 80s style animated background. 

Text Animation

1. Select the text layer.
2. Hit S on the keyboard to open up Scale. Shift-click on P to add in Position.
3. At the start of the Timeline, change Scale to 285. Hit the stopwatch to set a keyframe.
4. Change Position to 690, -270. Hit the stopwatch on that as well.
5. Move the Playhead to about 20 frames in, at 0;00;00;20. Change Scale to 90. Change Position to 695, 430.
6. Select all keyframes and navigate to Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease to smooth out the animation.

Glow Animation

1. Type “Glow” into Effects and Presets. Drag and drop onto the text layer.
2. With the Playhead at the start, hit the stopwatch on both Glow Radius and Glow Intensity.
3. Move the Playhead to 0;00;01;20.
4. Change Glow Radius to 50 and Glow Intensity to 2.5.

Lightning Animation

1. Duplicate the text layer by hitting Cntrl-D (PC) / Cmnd-D (Mac).
2. Hit Enter (PC) / Return (Mac) to rename this new layer “Lightning.”
3. Type in “Lightning” into the Effects and Presets panel, then drag it onto the new layer.
4. Move the Playhead to about 0;00;00;10.
5. Hit Alt-[ (PC) / Option-[ (Mac) to make the layer start at the Playhead location.
6. In the Effect Controls panel, hit the stopwatch on Conductivity State, Glow Radius, and Core Radius.
7. Bring all three values down to around 0.
8. Move the Playhead to 0;00;01;25.
9. Change Glow Radius to 55 and Core Radius to 3.5
10. Move the Playhead to 0;00;03;10.
11. Change Conductivity State to 10.
12. Finally, click and drag the swirly Parenting icon to the text layer to Parent the Lightning layer to the text layer.

Light Burst

1. Go up to Layer > New > Adjustment layer. Name this layer “Light Burst.”
2. Type in Light Burst into the Effects and Presets panel, drag it onto the Adjustment layer.
3. At 0;00;00;16, hit the stopwatch on Ray Length and Intensity. Change those values to 0.
4. Move the Playhead to 0;00;01;10. 
5. Change Intensity to 1400 and Intensity to 10.
6. Move the Playhead to 0;00;02;00. 
7. Change the values of both settings to 0 again.

Precomp and Reflection

1. Finally, select the text and Lightning layers.
2. Right click on any selected layer and click on Pre-compose. Name the Precomp “Text Effects.
3. Duplicate Text Effects and rename the new Precomp to Reflection.
4. Hit S for Scale on the Reflection layer, then unlink the X and Y values by clicking the paper clip icon between them.
5. Change the Y value to -100 to flip it upside down.
6. Drag the Reflection precomp below the main Text Effects in the composition window.
7. If not visible, display the Layer Modes by clicking on Toggle Switches/Modes in the lower left of the layer stack menu.
8. Change Reflection’s Layer Mode to Soft Light.

Video Transcript

Hi everyone. This is Tziporah Zions for Noble Desktop. And in this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to make a dynamic animated background in adobe after effects. So I'll show you what the finished effects looks like over here. So we're going to be starting with animating this text layer here. And after that, it's just a lightning effect animation, a light burst and then we're going to be adding this like cool reflection at the bottom using the previous layers altogether.

And like, this is a really good way to have your animations appear like super bold, impactful and based on just like some careful key framing in the parenting technique. The reflection at the end, like over here is it's a great detail to add any animation and it's just super easy to accomplish and like this, you know, this effects all about like plan experimentation.

So like, you know, change of font, you know, you can have a different reflection, you can parent different kinds of threats to it, but you'll see more as we get on with the project. So let's get started. And oh, by the way, and you can find the project in the video description below. So let's go. So the first thing we're going to be doing with the Playhead at the Origin, we're going to hit a store scale to open up like the size and stuff.

And by the way, the this font is called Horizon. It's free for free download and it's set to bold and like the paragraph settings or here they're pretty standard. Nothing unusual over here, but I just wanted like a nice thick font to stand out within this effect because there's quite a bit going on so first thing we're going to be doing, we're going to be entering the scale.

So a scale open the stopwatch of your stop start key framing that stuff, and we're going to be you know, let's set the scale to I'm going to put it around like 285. I want it nice and big like you see how you do this. And I'm also going to open up with Shift P on my keyboard to open up position.

I'm going to hit a stopwatch on position. I'm going to put up out of the frame. The reason being for this is because I want it to look like it's kind of slamming down into the frame, getting smaller with impact. Oh, about 17 frames in ish about that now 19 frames and you can see and I'm going to be changing I'm going to shrink the text to be in the middle.

So before I was about nine days, so I'll put it back. It might be a good idea and let's get that position to be down, down about in the middle over here. OK OK. All right. I've got mine at 430 here and I'm also going to be marking both of these. I'm going to select all my keyframes. I want to right click to keep it was just that is and that's just going to smooth out the motion of this text animation.

So you can see it looks like it's coming from outside experiment climbing down into the middle now I'm going to be heading over to some presets. I'm going to type in Glow and I'm going to grab Glow, drag it on to my text great. Now I'm going to start framing the Glow fact. So let's see, I'm going to put this around one second and 19 frames ish about there we go.

And I'm going to increase the glow to 50 boop I want to get that radius to about 50 basically. And I'm also going to keyframe glow intensity so radius is basically, as you can probably guess, like how spread out is the glow and the intensity is like how bright is the glow and I want this to push it up, pushed up, pushed up I like the way it looks.

Let's put it at three. I think that would be a good idea. So it's not too bright, but it's a nice, good looking effect. Actually, I'm indecisive. One dial back to 2.5. I like that. Perfect all right. Next thing we're going to be doing is click on the text layer. We're going to hit control than a PC command dynamic.

There we go. And we have a new layer. Now we're going to hit enter on a PC, return on a Mac, and we're going to rename this layer to Lightning. And what we're going to be doing is we're going to be typing in lightning and effects and presets over here, drag and drop, add on to our lightning layer.

And the reason why we are duplicated this layer as opposed to using an adjustment layer or anything else, is because I want this new layer to have like an alpha channel and also be able to match the movement of the layer beneath it. And we're also going to make sure that we don't I'm going to parent this to really make sure that it falls along with the motion but for now, that's that's what we're doing.

And what I want this lightning to do is so with this effect we can grab is like a little plus signs and we could drag them around. And I want them to go over the word radical. Next, we're going to be doing we're going to take the lightning type. We're going to put it into to a strike so it doesn't get hit off the edge of the composition.

Pull this one out a little bit more. We're going to be getting into the low settings over here and we're going to change this blue color to be a yellow color just like that. That's all we need. And now we are going to be key framing it. So with my playhead at one second, I'm over here, I'm going to hit oh, left bracket on my PC and a Mac.

It should be option left bracket. And that's going to cut this layer to just start around here. And I want it appearing beforehand. And then let's head over to effect controls so we're going to set conductivity state radius and control to zero and keyframe all three. So you know, that's a zero and I want to put you down to zero, please.

Thank you. And I want my core glow and then I'm going to change my glow radius. I said Aquarius before I apologize meant glow radius. I'm going to put that down to one because it's as low as it can go. And I want to hit the key for that stopwatch from that. So keep hearing that and then I'm going to move my playhead to about like one second, a little layered later in.

So I'm putting it at like one second and 25% and I'm going to be changing these, these settings. I'm going to be bumping them up a bit more. So my core radius and my low security. So I want to put it out like 9.5 and my glow, I'm going to bump that up to say 70, I think one to be quite intense at this point and then I think I'm going to let's see, I move it down a little bit more and then I want these two values to be one, two to kind of settle down a bit so my going could be three over here and I want it to be less than 70.

So I'm going to nudge down to 55 for me personally. But basically the idea here is that, you know, we want this lightning effect to start up and it's going to be kind of quiet and then those values are going to burst up, you know, get very intense and then we want it to kind of settle down a little bit more, you know, and just kind of like go on its way, still be there, but not be too intense.

And then last thing, I'm actually going to extend this quite a bit out. I'm going to be putting my playhead at the very end of my, you know, animation over here. And I have mine at like 3 seconds and each crimson and I'm going to be changing my conductivity state to ten. And the reason being for that is because I want, you know, this lightning effect to kind of wiggle move all over and conductivity state really controls that.

But I don't want it to stop moving while my animation is still playing. So I'm putting it all the way at the end. So it's got a reason to keep on moving, keep on moving, keep it moving till the very end of my animation now the last thing that we're gonna be doing is we're going to be popping this little to thing here, to the, the lightning effect, to the text effect.

And the reason for that is whenever you parent something with the picture, it basically it follows the initial movement out of the, you know, the parent layer. So you can see that there's a bit of a wiggle effect on that text effect over here. And the lightning effect is just gone along with it. It's fine.

All right. Next effect. So we're going to be making an adjustment layer, setting up to layer new, just layer in adjustment layers, right. It's basically an empty layer. And you could just dump all sorts of effects on it and it's going to, you know, pass down that effect onto every single layer below it. And you'll see what we mean once you start working with ours.

But they're super versatile. They're great. So I'm going to rename my interest layer here to this is going to be a light burst effect. So we'll just name it white first. I'd like to capitalize my stuff and we're going to type in light burst effects panel. And of course, my first again, grab it on to this new layer.

The new here is that I want this effect to really start flowing, burst onto the scene and then settle down until it's, you know, not really there anymore. So let's see. Let's get our playhead to around 14 frames to do 15, 14, you know, it's fine. We're here and I want to keyframe my intensity and relax to zero so stopwatch or both these guys down to zero.

Down to zero. You don't see these guys. Sorry that I'll just type it in over here, OK? It's not really noticeable. Then let's head over to the one minute 10 seconds frame in ten. I'm sorry about that one second ten frames and I have it at nine is fine and now I want this effect to get super intense like like you know, really burst onto the scene.

So I want my intensity over here to be I'm going to bump it up. I want to be more than 1300. I'm going to be 1300 and 50. I mean length over here let's see, ten is a pretty big number for this value. Whoa. Like that's crazy intense. But that's what I want right over here. And I'm like a you frames later yeah.

Maybe I'll make it an even like you know, 20 frames after one second and let's, let's try these things down. Let's get them back down to zero. Alternatively, you could just copy and paste your initial keyframes over here. Hit you top of these up. You could have placed these frames over here. I just randomly put it in, you know, 00 was quicker for me that way.

All right. Last thing to do, we're going to make a reflection. So let's shift select all of these layers like first lightning and the text effect. I'm going to right click. I'm going to pre compose them and I'm going to name these let's see, took select the reason being for this is you'll see after this I'm going to duplicate all these guys altogether and that program is going to help me do that.

So I'm going to hit control D on my PC or command, give you the Mac and I'm going to actually grab the bottom layer. I'm going to rename the original one reflection and I'm going to hit, let's see s for scale. And I want to unlink these values my X and Y. So normally, you know, these guys can change one the other value changes on X, Y, it's my plane, but I just want to change one of these values.

I want to put the sky upside down, so I am going to reverse it. So I'm going to go over to my y values over here and I'm going to make it a negative hundred root. And I'm going to grab this layer, pull it down, down, down over here. And I want it to kind of cut it off over here because again, that's going to be the reflection.

So we're not going to see the whole thing and last thing, we're going to change this layer mode to soft. Right now, if you don't see Layer Rhodes over here, you're going to hit toggle switches and modes. If you see this layout now, just press a button and I want my reflection to be softly that so soft light is going to blend in this layer with the, you know, the background that's under it underneath, you know, the layers that cover here.

All right. That's it. So like go flex and light bursts are awesome for transition effects and for like plussing up preexisting preexisting effects and like a super, you know, a super recommend changing of the font, changing of the background. You know, you don't even have to remove the lightning effect. You can grab any effect, any preset. Maybe you can get one of those simulator effects you know, you could try to get a bubble effect, you know, any particular effect and learn how to parent that to any other layer like a text effect layer instead of the scale starting out really big and have it really small and have it washing out from like the the

far off the background and adjustment layers are super useful. You know, you can put pretty much anything into them instead of having a lightning effect, you know, apparently to the text attack, you can put the lightning effect in the light burst. You know, for instance, you know, for in the adjustment layer. So like play around with this child for some effect, drag and drop, you know, whichever change the font ultimately you know, it's all about careful.

Q framing, knowing what to parent and which kind of layers do what. And also, you know, playing with your layer layer modes over here so yeah. And knowing how to reuse text and background actually like the reflection technique is also like super important as well. So they're very good for like redirecting what I highlighting and, you know, reusing your assets that you made.

So that's all for this tutorial. I hope you've enjoyed learning how to make a dynamic background in Adobe After Effects. And this has been super resilience for level desktop.